Thursday, April 7, 2011

Lucky you, if you haven’t yet chosen which classes to attend on your trip to the AQs Quilt Show & Contest – Paducah, April 27 – 30. Two amazing instructors still have openings in their classes, and their techniques will truly expand upon and improve your quiltmaking.

Called “Dilys the Quilt” per the custom of her Welsh homeland, Dilys Fronks has taught innovative quilt designs and techniques across the US and Europe for more than 20 years. Appearing in Paducah for the first time in several years, she will teach a positive/negative appliqué technique that she calls 2-4-1. That is, when you cut your appliqué shape 1 time, you get 2 possible blocks. “2 quilts for 1 effort” is another way to phrase it, as is the title of her very successful book, Dual Image Applique, (AQS, 2010). Dilys has an unusual way with color, too, so if spicing up your quilts and getting the most out of the time you spend quilting—2-4-1 style—then Dilys’s classes are not to be missed. Be happy you caught up with her while she’s in the US!

Marianne Hatton hails from the Boston area now, but this native South African, a newly-minted U.S. citizen, brings an unmistakable continental flair to sampler quilts. Forget boring 6, 9, or 12 set quilts incarcerated by sashing and weighed down with cornerstones. Marianne shows you how to make a dynamic sampler quilt quite simply by using a super simple grid. Mix and match blocks and go to town. Create themed quilts that look like landscapes—but the blocks are just as easy as any beginner sampler class! Create a memory quilt of a trip to Europe or bring your garden indoors. The sheer versatility of the process she explains in Simply Dynamic Sampler Quilts (AQS, 2010) will blow your mind in her very popular classes. Marianne doesn’t come South very often, so if you can snag a class with her this year, count yourself fortunate.